A literary history of Persia

360- DECLINE >OF THE CALIPHATEdynasty (known as the Ziyarids) which endured, and playedan honourable part in the promotion of learning and theprotection of letters, for more than a century, ere it wasextinguished by the Ghaznawls. And in yet another wayMardawfj played an important part in Persian history,for tohim the great House of Buwayh, which by the middle of thetenth century was practically supreme throughout SouthernPersia and in Baghdad itself,owed its first fortunes ;and fromhim c Alib. Buwayh, who afterwards, with the titleof 'Imddu'd-Dawla, ruled over Fars, or Persis proper, received his firstappointment as governor of Karach.who flourished at this epochAmongst the men of learningthe first place must without doubt be assigned to the historianAbu Ja'farMuhammad .b.Jarfr at-Tabarf (t A.D.Writers and men..x,-,,,of learning of this Q2?), * *1 whose great Chronicle ends ten years earlierepoch.-tabari.= \ .(A.H. 300 A.D. 912-913), thus depriving us ofone of our best sources of information, though the Supplementof 'Arfb b. Sa'd of Cordova carries = us down to the end ofal-Muqtadir's Caliphate (A.H. 320 A.D. 932), after which wehave to depend chiefly for general history on Ibnu'l-Athfr(t A.D. 1232-3), the author of the great Kamilut-TawMkh*"In this year" (A.H. 310), says the latter, "died at Baghdad Muhammadb. Jarir at-Tabari, the historian, who was born in A.H. 224(= A.D. 838-9). He was buried by night in his house, because themob assembled and prevented him from being buried by day,declaring that he was a Rafidi (Shi'ite) and even a heretic. And'Ali b. 'Isa used to say,'By Allah, were these people to be questioned1The edition of this great work by Professor de Goeje and a small bodyof the most distinguished Arabic scholars must be regarded as the greatestachievement of Oriental scholarship in Europe in "recent times. Thisedition comprises 13 vols. of text and 2 vols. of Indices and ApparatusCriticus ;the publication was begun at Leyden in A.D. 1879, ar*d completedin 1901. 'Arib's Tabari continuatus, edited by de Goeje, waspublished in 1897.2Tornberg's edition (Leyden, 1851-1876) in 14 vols. is the best, as it hasan index, which the Cairo edilion of A.H. 1303 (the text which I have usedthroughout) has not.